App developers challenged by number of different devices

Consumers may be thrown by all the different mobile devices on the market. But app developers face an even thornier problem.

Creating software for the mobile landscape has become harder as the sheer number of different devices have proliferated.

The number of major operating systems might be limited — Apple’s iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry. But each OS can be home to dozens or hundreds of different phones and tablets, especially in the Android arena.

Developers who want to write for 90 percent of all active devices would need to support 331 different models, according to a report out today from Flurry. Those who would settle for 80 percent would still have to support 156 different devices. Even reaching just 50 percent of all active devices means building apps for 18 different models.

A large development company may have the time, money, and staff to devise apps for all those different models. But a small independent developer lacks those resources. So, how do they compete? Are indie developers becoming an “endangered species?” asks Mary Ellen Gordon, author of today’s Flurry blog

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Available for Android, with an incarnation also optimized for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, the app visualizes the myriad of networks that constitute that thing known as the Internet. It shows Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet exchange points, and organizations that help route traffic across the online sphere, such as universities.

Driving and smartphones don’t mix well. While you can get a lot done using voice commands with Siri on your iPhone, you still have to activate her. If you’re driving, that can take valuable seconds away from paying attention to the road. The AirDock Kickstarter project is looking to make Siri air-activated rather than fingertip-activated.

The iPhone has been out a while, but new cases for it keep arriving.
What’s the best one? Very hard to say. The problem is that everybody has different tastes in cases. And, of course, some folks choose not to bother with them at all.

An Apple smartwatch device seems to be on the drawing board after all, according to a patent filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Filed in August 2011 but published today, the Apple patent filing known as “Bi-Stable Spring With Flexible Display” describes a flexible touchscreen device that can display information.